A Tale of One Song

It’s 1991 and summertime – summer camp to be more exact. Several of my friends and I have spent a week throwing ourselves off the high dive and onto “The Blob” on the lake, playing volleyball, softball and soccer, fishing, making leather bracelets, having small group Bible studies and large feet-stompin’-hand-clappin’ praise Jesus sessions in the foothills of the Ozarks with a crazy bunch of college counselors at a camp called Kids Across America. It’s been a full whirlwind week of fun. One of the last nights there was “skit night,” where kids and leaders would sing, dance, perform and generally act like hooligans for the entertainment of the masses. Several of my guy friends decided to lip sync Place in this World by Michael W. Smith. It was a pretty decent rendition, with one friend “playing” the synthesized keyboards while the other sang – and for some reasons they both were wearing sunglasses. The keyboarder was a little bit of Stevie Wonder, and the singer was just…cool. (Sigh – it didn’t hurt that I had a pretty major crush on him that would last most of my teenage years). The sound was just tinny enough to capture that early adolescent angst; I had just graduated 8th grade and was doing a lot of thinking about my high school career. Who would I be? What kind of friends would I have? What kind of mark would I make – at my new school, and on the world? What was my place in this world? That song perfectly encapsulates the freedom of that week at summer camp, those few friends I still have, and my young self, longing to find my own place and leave my own mark in this world.

This post is day three of #Writing101, part of a Blogging U course. We were supposed to write about the three most important songs, and then commit to a writing practice for the duration of the course (recommended 15 minutes of uninterrupted time per day). I tried to write without stopping, but this was a hard assignment. I finally picked this song, and spent a while thinking and remembering as I wrote and decided to stop with one song because I’m tired. Perhaps I’ll add to this post later; regardless, it’s been a nice trip down memory lane.